


Babel

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:34:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: This was also posted to Tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there.
Comments: 59
Kudos: 370





	Babel

Nile took Spanish in school and has a professionally useful but otherwise limited capacity in Pashto, so she’s very aware that she’s a linguistic infant in her new team in addition to all of the other ways she’s an infant on this team. Andy, Nicky, and Joe seem to speak every language there is and will cheerfully mock each other’s accents and vocabulary, so Nile downloading Duolingo and starting at the top with the intent on working her way down is as much self-defense mechanism as a way to pass the time. The others will remember to speak in English when she’s present, but they’re also pretty liberal in their thinking on what is going to get lost in translation and shouldn’t be attempted.

“Booker’s crap with languages, too,” Andy tells her when she’s found stumbling through the rudimentaries of Arabic that don’t involve telling people to put down their weapons. “He’s French from a time when France was like America - they thought everyone should speak their language, too. He got away with it because the rest of the world didn’t completely disagree. He picked up English eventually and can make himself understood in a couple others, but it’s never been his strong suit.”

“So I’m him now for more than just the fact that none of you can do shit with a computer without me,” Nile asks, mostly rhetorically.

“You don’t stink of sorrow,” Andy says as she wanders off. “You don’t stink at all, which is still weird. Why does everyone need to bathe all of the time?”

Andy insists she doesn’t even remember the language she grew up speaking, which Nile thinks is bullshit and Joe says would be a historical travesty in a way that clearly implies that he thinks it’s bullshit, too. She will answer in whatever language she’s spoken to unless she’s pissed off or making a point, but nobody can actually test her on a language otherwise lost to time. Nicky and Joe speak to each other in Italian and Arabic mostly, English sometimes, Greek and French occasionally, Spanish once in a great while and random languages just to be cute. Joe calling Nicky ‘the Frank’ is not a compliment and Nicky addressing Joe in funky-sounding Latin is also a sign of discord, but they don’t fight in front of witnesses so Nile doesn’t know what language they actually argue in.

It’s kinda embarrassing when Nile forgets that Italian and Arabic aren’t Nicky and Joe’s first languages or even their fifth. Especially because she knows damned well that English now wasn’t English three hundred years ago, let alone a thousand, and it’s got to be true for all the others.

“We started talking to each other in the new versions just to get used to them,” Joe explains after Nile’s made an ignoramus of herself. “You use a word from six hundred years ago once, it’s a joke you can pass off. You keep doing it, people remember you. We try to stay forgettable.”

She doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that a few days later she finds Nicky using Google Translate to look up words from an article on an Italian news site. “Vocabulary is terrible,” he sighs. “New technology, slang, it never stops. You want to get by in a language, you need to keep practicing it. Words you use now will stop being used and you will have to adapt. Especially because we look young enough that not being current would be weird.”

“ _I_ get to stop paying attention,” Andy says from the other end of the table, grinning and then grinning more when they react in horror to the reason why. “No more 'thong’ problems for me.”

Flip-flops with a divider for the big toe used to be called thongs in English, Nicky has to explain once they’ve both stopped coughing and laughing, and before that thongs were leather ties. Now thongs are just the skimpy underwear, but the transition caught them unaware and there’s a shop clerk somewhere in greater Miami who probably still has stories to tell.

Joe makes her practice her Arabic every day, becoming more of a pain in the ass than that stupid green bird because Duo only wants her to learn Standard Arabic. Joe believes that that’s useless and she needs the colloquial version because that’s what actually gets used day-to-day, so he keeps correcting her pronunciation from what the app is teaching her and giving her new vocabulary words to replace what she’s learned.

“Don’t give her your shitty _derja_ accent,” Andy chastises when she finds them in the backyard, Joe pointing to plants and animals and making Nile repeat the words. “Pick something that’s understandable to everyone else. Go watch the Gulf channels, they don’t sound like they have rocks in their mouths when they talk.”

Nicky agrees with Andy, but he’s nicer about it. “Gulf or Iraqi would be more plausible,” he suggests delicately over dinner. “You could have picked it up working in those places. It would require less explaining and you don’t have to remember elaborate stories for places you haven’t been.”

They end up making their base in Slovenia, which does not end the debates about Nile’s Arabic but nobody even suggests she start picking up Slovene so it goes down as a win. 

Copley thinks they’re somewhere else entirely and his attempts at trying to get Nile to accidentally provide clues turns into a different set of language lessons from the gang. 'How to talk to spies and other bad guys’ lessons take place in English, but with a healthy dose of curse words in other languages. Her Arabic won’t get her a kilo of fruit in the markets of Abu Dhabi yet, but it would probably get her slapped across the face almost anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> [This was also posted to Tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there. ](https://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/624830134756769792/babel-the-old-guard)


End file.
